The Alps

A day through the Alps

Breakfast is nice again. Butterbrot, Schinken, and all that. We get to boil our own
egg. Ask mom
how fun that was. ;-)

The night before, in Innsbruck, I paid my €2 for 15 minutes on the Internet to get
the next few days’ train schedules from bahn.de
(best rail planner for all of Europe, except Great Britain and parts of Italy). According
to my notes, we have two ways that we can go today. We can either take the route that goes
through
the thick of the Alps past Zugspitze, riding 3 trains and a bus, or we can take just
two trains by
way of München, missing many mountains and putting us there 30 minutes later, no less.
We decide to go the first way and risk the many train changes.

Our first train leaves bright and early at 08:30, and our walk to the
station is taking longer than I expect. We get the attention of a older lady standing
on her balcony, and her directions indicate that I’ve led us down the wrong path. We
make it on the train in the nick of time.

Amazing train service! All the connections are on time. Too bad we don’t have a
bubble view car this time, but mom still gets some nice pictures of the mountains.

In Pfronten, we’re supposed to catch the bus to Füssen. The bahn.de schedule
informs us that we get off the train on the outskirts and take a bus the rest of
the way. Our wait at the bus stop is supposed to be only 10 minutes, but looking
at the schedule on
the sign post, it seems that we have missed the bus and must wait an hour. We decide
to eat at a small restaurant. The menu is all
sausage and veal. Mom and I get Currywurst and
Bratwurst, while Kaitlyn gets some fries and a pizza from down the street. (I made the
mistake of telling her that the skin on sausage is made from pig intestines. Doh!)
Lots of bees, so we eat inside, where there are still some bees because they keep
the door open.
While we are eating, a whole troop of Boy and Girl Scouts come in and invade the
bathrooms. It’s kinda funny. While waiting at the bus stop to head to Füssen, we find out
from a skateboarder that today is a holiday, and we were reading the wrong schedule.
Had we stayed at the bus stop, we would have caught the bus. Oh well, we had a good meal.

Hohenschwangau castle

Unfortunately the bus fiasco puts us behind schedule. We arrive at the hotel
in Füssen, which
is in my opinion the nicest hotel after the one in Rome (although
Kaitlyn’s bed is kind of tiny here). But the best part of this hotel is that it is
right over
an excellent bakery! We have to have “lunch” here. Yummm. Afterward, we go to the
bus station and catch a taxi to Hohenschwangau. The tours of the Neuschwanstein
castle are sold out, so we get a tour of the Hohenschwangau castle instead. The
nice thing about the Hohenschwangau castle is that you get a good view of
Neuschwanstein from there. :-) And we get to ride a horse buggy to the castle, too.

The tour is funny. It’s an English tour, but the lady can barely speak
English. Cute. Plus, one of the tourists was a pretty doofy and obnoxious American.
You know that typical stupid character that Rodney Dangerfield plays? That’s this
guy—exactly. He looks and talks just like Rodney: “Is that real gold? This king
must have been rich, let me tell ya.” Well, duh. The sad thing is that this guy isn’t
acting. After the tour, Kaitlyn buys a
nice edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in the castle bookstore.
In the shop they also have Struwwel Peter and Max und Moritz, which I
later see in every bookstore we go into in Germany. Can’t get away from the classics,
I guess.

It’s back to the hotel. After a week of wearing the same clothes two or three days, and
after all the walking, it is time for me to take a bath—not a shower, a bath! Here’s some
more trivial
fun: the water spout on the bathtub is on the side, and as the water fills the tub, it
slides down the side like a tiny waterfall. It’s pretty cool and really quiet. Makes
sense for a hotel. It’s a nice deep tub, too. Good for big old me!